Dellex of Stormwind

Last night after another failed session of attacking Wintergrasp (seriously, I’m not sure I’ve won anything all week), a few lower-level friends were getting messed with by The Great Lift in the Barrens. Akahn & I, being the stand-up guys we are went to slay the evil paladin who was dancing naked enticing level 20’s to attack him.

Well we did, easily, hell – without losing any health right outside of Razorfiend Downs, but as we were waiting for Arcadun to get his body back and run RFD the pally attacked us again.

Long story short, he died 4 times. While I won’t say that I would not have killed him again after looting his corpse, but had we decided between RFD and RFK a little quicker we likely may not have killed him again. After getting attacked though, we just set up camp – and by set up camp I mean we actually put campfires on his corpse and practiced all the emotes we could think of. At any rate, chalk this one up to another satisfied customer.

At any rate, I never use acronyms like “lol”, but under the circumstances my sarcasm knew no bounds. Note my original reply with the patented Ric Flair “woo!” – I forgot I did that and it even made me laugh a little as I posted this. He did tell me to go to Youtube because I think he started to think I was serious, but apparently I missed that screenshot so feel free to call bullshit in the idea that he bought my responses.

The Franchise

This group right here, guilded under the name of The Franchise on my own server, absolutely lit up a Warsong Gulch I was in the other night. I post this for no other reason than to remind myself to stock back up on lube, as I believe I emptied an entire Netherweave Bag of it in this particular battle. It is comforting to know that not all Alliance suck at PvP on my server, and I look forward to the day that one of them hands me my ass running around Azeroth.

I’ve hit a rough streak over the last week in terms of emerging victorious in battlegrounds, meaning I think I can count the number of victories on one hand. In this particular battle I zoned in to the Horde only having 7 players, and I rode out to find 3 people back behind the hillside near the wheel running under the Horde base. I flagged them as AFK, and then rode out and dropped the paladin who was heading towards our graveyard.

Little did I know that it would be the last recorded kill of the instance. I spawned a few more times to be killed before I could turn around, to which I promptly waved the white flag and stood in the distance watching, see pic:

The amazing thing about this was that people kept on rezzing, only to be slaughtered again. And again. And again. One would think that people would get tired of this, but apparently I was wrong. Well, I didn’t want a deserter tag because I was heavy PvPing this particular night, so I decided at 2-0 that it would end fairly quickly. Wrong again. The Franchise stayed put in our graveyard until 1:00 left in the match when someone finally picked up the Horde flag and ran it to the other side, thus ending the longest 27:00 of my life.

Onyxien the Netherwing Drake

In what has been essentially the first reputation grind that I have done on this character, last week I finished just over 2 weeks worth of dailies and earned exalted status with the Netherwing faction in Shadowmoon Valley. This camp was a must-do for me, as since I returned to WoW on my human death knight I had seen these dragons alongside the newer models (Bronze, Red) and just knew I had to have one above everything else. I mean, not only do I get to select the color (duh, black), but the things have iridescent wings and lightning pulses through their body – how is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?!

Anyway as I did with the Axe of the Frozen Wastes post a while back, I just wanted to give a quick run-down in layman’s terms as to the quest chains that I did, how I did them and perhaps what to expect should you choose to do the same.

The first thing about these quests is that you start out Hated with Netherwing, and you must do a quest chain to Neutral before you will be able to start doing the dailies that I will describe. While you will need to have Artisan Riding purchased to continue from Neutral to Exalted, anyone can perform the quests to get to Neutral.

The first thing to do is to seek out a Blood Elf named Mordenai fighting Rocknails on the ground just to the east of the Sanctum of Stars (remember to always set your track options to “Low Level Quest” to obtain these), to which he will start you out with a quest entitled “Kindness”. While this is not at all a hard quest, remember not to have something that causes damage on you as it will cause the dragon to attack you. Most of the rest of these are easy to figure out (especially if you’re using Questhelper) up until “Karynaku”, which will tell you it is a 5-man quest and it can prove difficult. When I did the quest at 76 thinking I’d get a drake without (300) flying I failed miserably in trying this myself, but I did eventually coerce someone in zone to help me. With the gear I have now I could solo the encounter, but I may have had a little trouble as a new-80. If you are a new 80 or concerned, clean out all the mobs in the rooms to your sides as well as the guards on the balconies, and then fight Zuluhed the Whacked in one of the cleared out rooms to avoid the surprise waiting for you on the balcony. Following this quest you will get another that will grant you 42k reputation points and bring you to Neutral with the Netherwings.

Once you have obtained Neutral status (as well as 300 flying), until you get to Friendly you will have 1 quest that involves retrieving an item from an elite and easily soloable giant insect at the very top of the range you are questing on, as well dailies for gathering skills, Netherwing Crystals, killing peons and killing the mounted riders patrolling the sky. I was a miner, so during my first day of mining I got so much that I had my turn-ins done for a week, which was moreso true on the crystals, of which I never needed to re-farm those for the next 2 weeks. 40 ores and 30 crystals become a daily turn in that yields substantial reputation. The other 2 dailies are simple, but what you need to do is fly to the area just south of Shadowmoon Village and kill 12 beasts (the boars or dinosaurs work) in order to get 12 poisoned meals to serve the peons mining away throughout the island, and the other involves flying onto one of the pieces of debris north of the island and catching passerby riders until you have slain and looted 10 of their marks.

Of note, looting Netherwing Eggs is a static quest that you can turn in as many times as you have items. These eggs spawn all over the area and grant you 250 rep every time, and a good way to get started on these is to watch this video:

Now from Friendly to Honored you get 3 more quests that involve the Murkbloods deep in the mines as well as 3 more dailies that consist of mine work. At this point I am daily flying into the Dragonmaw camp, grabbing all my quests and then heading to the mine to make the run down to the Rocknails in order to loot mine carts and kill 15 of these creatures. From there I fly to the island I kill riders on, and from there I head to get the 12 glands that are used to poison the peons. While poisoning peons I “booterang” the malcontents, and mine anything that pops up as I go.

From Honored to Revered you get 1 new daily which involves flying to the west end of Nagrand to slay 15 demons, which I was typically doing after getting my 12 glands. The 2 new quests offered here involves the flying mount races to which I completed all except the last, and the other is just a side loot while killing the mobs in Nagrand.

Revered carries a fun new quest/daily where you are supposed to go against your Shattrah faction (Aldor/Scyer), but you rig it up to where everyone wins and you can get more reputation.

So essentially just keep doing your dailies every day and this can go as fast as a week and as long as 3 if you are not completing your dailies. In my quest, I put aside all other dailies for the most part and even passed up a lot of PvP time, but I always finished every daily that was offered and it took me right at 2 weeks. The series is a pain that seems as monotonous as can be expected, but he end result was more than worth it for me. Side benefits, while rumored to be in excess of 3,000 gold during the quests, I can’t say for sure that they did generate that but I did make an incredible amount of money selling Adamantite Ore that I picked up looking for the Nethercite Ore for turn-ins. Those alone left me around 400 ores to sell when I was finished.

Typhoon Ownage

Lozar was telling me a story about using Typhoon, and as he explained it I clarified that I knew all too well about it. Well, I had to share my favorite Typhoon spell cast of all time, which happened as an Alliance guild was in route to kill Tauren leader Cairne Bloodhoof.

For Halo…

Just posting this for Halomoo because he logged off pissed last night after not being able to land himself into a winning Strand of the Ancients for the PvP Daily. This match coincidentally would be my first and only of the night.

(Note the “Storm the Beach” achievement as well).

Oh and that honor, plus the daily honor and the 3 tokens that allowed me to turn in 3 times for more honor got me my last piece of Gladiator gear (cloak). To top that off, the +35 spell piercing enchant was on the AH for 35 gold so I bought it as well. In fact, being that most of the time that goes for 200+, I bought all 3 of them posted and sent them to my bank alt.

I guess what I’m trying to say is – wow, last night was a pretty productive night.

Armored Brown Bear

I really just broke down and bought this because Akahn and Halomoo had one, and pretty much as soon as I scribed it in and mounted it for this pic I failed to even create a hotkey for it. What can I say, I’m a black, war-oriented mount type of guy – I ride a wolf or mammoth about everywhere I go that I can’t fly.

Which kind of begs the question as to why I don’t have the Black War Bear which is gained by slaying the Alliance leaders, to which I have no answer because I don’t even think people do it that often anymore.

I hope to have a post up tomorrow evening regarding a recent, major acquisition of mine that occurred yesterday (not hard to figure out if you watch achievements) that also involves a black mount, but I will describe that in detail then.

Stormwind Assassin

When I said that the last video made me want to be a rogue, I wasn’t playing around. I have created one, I am just yet to officially log her into the game. As a general disclaimer, I really don’t do alts – I’m more of an “accomplish everything on one character” type guy, but doing the things Drstun does on this video is precisely why I want to level up a rogue.

As another disclaimer I don’t play female characters, but the idea of people getting killed by a female orc rogue named “Viktorre” just makes me laugh.  Anyway ~

World PvP is the greatest part of it for me. I certainly like Alterac Valley, Isle of Conquest and Wintergrasp much more than Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm because I enjoy the advantages and disadvantages that mismatches create, and I feel that half of PvP is utilizing the environment and putting yourself in favorable conditions to win. In 40 on 40 battles there are many things going on throughout the battlefield, but they also contain the ability to actually partake in massive battles within them as well (except WG, the lag-haven of WoW). While I do not feel that I would be bad at Arena combat, I just haven’t tried it yet nor do I have any desire to do so except for the fact that Blizzard makes me in order to achieve a full set of PvP gear (weapons mostly). Also, my reasoning for side-stepping the whole reason I posted this video was totally unplanned, so…

Anyway, this video has nothing special as far as clever editing or anything, but it is an honest-to-god video of a rogue not only ganking in Stormwind, but it also shows plenty of failures as well. This is the type of PvP that makes me wish I had a level 80 rogue to gank with, and thus I thought I would share so that you don’t have to sift thru hundreds of bad PvP videos to find a good one.

…the Hallowed

Another title = another progression check.

Since October 8th (2 weeks), I have gained 264 STR, 266 STA, 5690 Armor, 472 damage, 1025 atk pwr, 32 hit and 3.92% crit – and none of this takes into account my advancement in other profile tabs such as spell power (currently at 110) and resilience (618). I realize that I am only likely to see significant improvement one more time after filling in my ring and cloak spot with something Gladiator but ya, I still really like posting these.

I Fail

I mean, it could be anybody including my dickheaded friends, but I received these comments after a really cool situation in Nagrand.

While doing my dailies out of Shadowmoon Valley I wanted to finish The Ring of Blood in order to get this achievement. As I approached this area in Nagrand I saw a complete group of Alliance currently partaking in the battle, so like any self-respecting person I landed inside of the mob and started spreading diseases like a gas station restroom.

The 5 of them died very quickly, as I’m not sure if my Pygmy Oil really disguised me that well or they thought they could burn down the mob (if you die, you fail regardless). As I stood waiting for their counterattack, all of them hovered above on their mounts doing nothing. A druid swooped down in an apparent attempt to piss me off or something, but he instead became the idiot who got death gripped and killed in 3 hits.

At any rate, the 5 level 67-73 players weren’t going to kill me regardless so I started the fight I needed to finish from that questline, and right as it started I had 2 level 80 Hunters start attacking me from a distance.  I death gripped the closest one to me and killed him while tanking the mob (who albeit hit much softer than the hunters), and with hitting a potion and sacrificing my pet I managed to kill the other hunter before tapping back all my life from the mob. So ya, 2 level 80 hunters attacked me on an elite mob, and I destroyed all 3 of them. Yay resilience. Point of the story, whether the above comment was my friends screwing with me or one of the 7 who died in Nagrand, it is always nice to have affected someone so positively enough that it warranted them to create a cross-faction character to tell me so.

This was also one of those moments that make me wish I kept fraps running while I play.

Outland Bound

I’m getting dangerously close to completing my PvP gearset with only needing 2 more pieces to complete my original level 80 goal, and I’m currently working on establishing how I am going to proceed thereafter with my alternate dps spec. I’m still teetering on going tank or dps, but because top-end weapons are so hard to come by I think that working towards obtaining the Edge of Ruin will enable me to use it for my Unholy PvP spec as well as a 2h Bood dps spec.

I will post more on all that later, but for now I have doubled up my daily quest routine to not only include Dalaran professions and the Argent Tournament, but I have begun working towards obtaining exalted reputation with the Netherwings in Shadowmoon Valley in order to obtain a decent-looking mount – however I am unsure as to how long I will stick to it because it really is a giant pain the ass. Either way, I’ll post about the experience any which way it goes.